Rhetoric, Media, and Social Change

Program Options

Program Overview

The program in Rhetoric, Media, and Social Change (RMSC) considers how our use of language and symbols shapes who we and others are, what we may become, and what we do. Courses in the RMSC major bring critical attention to the nature of representations and communicative/knowledge practices and how they mediate our lives and experience, with particular attention to the contested and changing character of identity, community, public life, ethics, and morality. Students in the program learn to analyze forms of media from across political, popular, and professional cultures. The major also invites students to understand the movement of social change in a range of settings and to consider how those settings offer differing resources for them to engage in political action in their own lives.

B.A. Degree Requirements

The major prepares students for careers in law and public administration, medicine and public health, activism, social work, advertising and marketing, politics and public policy, business, banking, and consulting, among others. The various courses in the RMSC program examine social groups and processes in a wide diversity of contexts, with an emphasis on language, communicative practices, and social justice.

The program is interdisciplinary, including classes in rhetoric, sociology, and anthropology. Students should work with their advisers to assure selection of courses compatible with their educational and career objectives.

Required Courses

Credits

SCSR 024 - Rhetoric and Social Change

3

SCSR 060 - Media Culture and Communication

3

SCSR 124 - Texts, Images, Audiences

3

SCS 110* - Culture, Knowledge, Power

3

Choose one course from each of the three major areas below, Rhetoric, Media, and Social Change

Rhetoric

SCSR 073 - Public Speaking

3

SCSR 110 - History of American Public Address

3

SCSR 112 - Rhetoric and War

3

SCSR 116 - Rhetorics of Class

3

SCSR 118 - Rhetorics of the American Family

3

SCSR 120 - Rhetorics of Sex and Gender

3

SCSR 122 - Rhetorical Bodies

3

SCSR 129 - Speech Pedagogy

3

SCSR 146 - Communication and Religion

3

SCSR 150 - Rhetorical Theory

3

SCSR 180 - Postcolonial Rhetorics

3

Media

SCSR 040 - Popular Trials

3

SCSR 106 - Aesthetics of Everyday Life

3

SCSR 108 - Imaging the City

3

SCSR 114 - Rhetorics of Race

3

SCSR 144 - Visual Rhetorics

3

SCSR 148 - Suburbia and Contemporary Film

3

SCSS 135 - Science and Society

3

SCSS 155 - Global Youth Studies

3

SCSS 156 - Representing Race

3

SCSS 176 - Documenting Lives

3

SCSS 177 - Gender and Violence

3

Social Change

Analysis and Critique

SCSA 081 - Borders and Boundaries

3

SCSA 158 - Global Reproductive Politics

3

SCSG 092 - Cultural Geography of Islam

3

SCSR 079 - Home: Dwelling and Belonging

3

SCSR 155 - Rhetorics and Space and Place

3

SCSS 130 - Contemporary Chinese Society

3

SCSS 130 - New Materialist Feminisms

3

SCSS 150 - Constructing Normal

3

SCSS 150 - Ethics of Transnational Adoption

3

SCSS 151 - Criminology

3

SCSS 160 - Jobs, Organizations, Inequality

3

SCSS 164 - Feminism, Nature, Matter

3

SCSS 170 - Deviance

3

SCSS 174 - Feminist Theories of Subjectivity

3

SCSS 178 - Gender, Technology, Embodiment

3

Advocacy

SCSR 055 - Environmental Communication

3 or 4

SCSR 128 - Argumentation and Advocacy

3

SCSR 128 - Rhetoric and Social Movements

3

SCSR 140 - Communication and Law

3

SCSR 142 - Political Communication

3

SCSS 020 - Introduction to Race and Ethnicity

3

SCSS 070 - Environmentalism in the US

3

SCSS 072 - Global Social Change

3

SCSS 080 - Social Problems

3

SCSS 157 - Sociology of the Sixties

3

SCSS 173 - Global Citizenship

3

SCSS 175 - Social Stratification

3

Electives - Choose three additional courses of your choice

9

Senior Capstone Seminar (Offered each semester. To be taken in final year of major.)

3

TOTAL

33

*SCS 110 is offered once every two years, either in spring or fall semester. RMSC majors graduating in May or December 2018 who have not completed SCS 110 (Culture, Knowledge, Power) should take SCSR 124 (Texts, Images, Audiences) in its place.

Rhetoric, Media, and Social Change Minor

Required Courses

Credits

SCSR 024 - Rhetoric and Social Change

3

SCSR 060 - Media, Culture, and Communication

3

SCSR 124 - Texts, Images, Audiences, or

SCS 110* - Culture, Knowledge, Power

3

Choose one course from each of the three major areas listed for the RMSC major: Rhetoric, Media, and Social Change

9

TOTAL

18

*SCS 110 is offered once every two years, either in spring or fall semester. Plan accordingly so you can complete this requirement.